Plants may be used for many different commercial applications, and in most cases, efficient plant growth positively affects their commercial value. For example, plants may be used to express proteins in large quantities (e.g. proteins to be used in the creation of vaccines). In such a case, the more robustly the plant grows, the more protein product is produced. Many challenges exist in growing plants efficiently and robustly, while keeping overhead costs down. For example, plants benefit from sources of nutrition (e.g. nutrition solutions, fertilizers, etc.) and from controlled environmental conditions (e.g. temperature, light, etc.), which can be costly. In addition, plants take up a large amount of space, which further contributes to the overhead costs of using plants for commercial purposes.
Thus, there is a need for improved systems and methods of growing plants which are less costly, more space-efficient methods of growing plants, and which more efficiently utilize a nutrition source provided to plants by a grower.